Today's guest post is by David Moore, a photographer and multimedia expert in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He is pretty active on Twitter, where you can learn more from him. Check out his website, Clearing The Vision: Documenting The Everyday Joys Of Family Life.

Stop me before I look at another gear website

My name's David and I'm a gear review junkie. It's a blessing to be surrounded by all this great photography information and constant improvements every year from manufacturers, but it's also a curse. You end up never satisfied with what you've got, and it can actually hinder your improvement as a photographer (and drive you bankrupt if your'e a pro).

We spend all this time devouring news and reviews, speculating over the amazing images we'd make with new gear, but deep down we know that what we have already is likely more than good enough. It's just easier to read up on stuff than to go out and work hard.

It starts simply enough. There's a new camera or lens announced that promises to be better than what you currently have in some particular way – sharpness, focus speed, low-light performance, whatever.

Oh, says your Gear Acquisition Syndrome (GAS – thanks to Zack Arias for the useful term), you want to be prepared. You want to have the best gear, to deliver the best service. You should read up on this new shiny bauble, and maybe even get it.

So then you disappear down a rabbit hole. You compare MTF charts, you read five different reviews of the same thing, pixel peep giant sample files, and then it gets worse as you start reading forum discussions.

Soon, it's an hour later and you're looking for bad images on the website of a landscape photographer in New Zealand who made some comment you didn't like discussing a camera you've never seen, and you realize … what the hell am I doing?

People have taken amazing photographs for decades with cameras much worse than mine. And some of my favourite images are those I shot with my first DSLR – a Rebel XT – and the cheap plastic Canon 50mm f/1.8.

If this were a hobby for me, then reading photography gear reviews would be a leisure activity. Like cycling enthusiasts reading bike reviews – it's part of the lifestyle, something that comes with being part of the club. I might be able to improve my photography more by doing something else but if it's a hobby, and if I love looking at 100% crops of the edge sharpness of a particular lens, then I should go right ahead and do it. And if I have disposable income and want to spend it on gear I don't need, then that's my choice.

But this is a job for me, so my concerns are (or should be) different. From a business perspective, I need to spend the least amount of money I can on gear to successfully complete the paying jobs I have. If I spend any more, then I'm not making as much profit as I can. There might be times when successfully completing a job means having all sorts of expensive gear (like Chase Jarvis and his range of helicopters), but that's not most of us.

So for a pro, having the absolute best gear is not always the best solution – having good enough gear is better. Wedding photogs all have stories of guests at the reception with better cameras than they have – but it doesn't matter if you can't even get the best out of what you have. You could give me the best guitar in the world, but it's not going to win me a Grammy.

Pros also need to budget their time as well as their money. The time I spend thinking about gear is time I'm not earning, marketing, improving my skills, networking or doing anything else that will improve my business or my craft more immediately.

Amateur or pro, it's clear that we'd produce markedly better images if we stopped fetishising the latest new announcements and actually went out and photographed more and more thoughtfully, read more books, or attended more workshops.

A documentary photography workshop attended (led by Deanne Fitzmaurice) earlier this year was a much better investment than putting that money into the 35mm f/1.4 lens I'd been coveting. I learned a ton and throughout the four days not once did the subject of specific gear even come up. I still have no idea what most of the other attendees were even shooting with – it just didn't matter.

Unless you have money in your pocket and you've been butting up against a very specific limitation in the gear you currently have that's hindering your progress, then you have no place reading gear reviews.

Obviously, I'm not the first to point this out (David duChemin has made his ‘gear is good, vision is better' approach a key part of his career, but since I'm suffering from a bad case of GAS myself right now, it's time for some hard medicine.

Here's what I prescribe:

1) Unless you've identified a real need for new piece of gear, and have the money to buy it, don't look at gear reviews. At all.

2) Go to the library and check out some photography books, especially monographs by some of the great photographers. When you get an urge to see how the D600 compares to the 6D, study their work instead, telling yourself that almost all of it was shot with gear that's worse than the stuff you've got now that you're complaining about.

3) Give yourself shooting exercises and personal projects so you can improve your craft, and get to know the gear you've got intimately, Find out where it's good and where it's not – it might turn out that the stuff it's not great at doesn't actually matter. For example, the Canon 35mm f/2 I've got vignettes at the corners and has a really buzzy noise as it focuses. Both of those are Bad Things, but neither of them matter much for me. DuChemin's Craft and Vision publishers offer some good ebooks to give you ideas on projects and tutorials you can follow.

4) Wait until you're in a situation where your current gear is repeatedly letting you down in real world (preferably paid) shoots, before you even think about getting new gear. Then, if you need something for a paying job, rent it first. If the next paying job for which you need it is not for another two months, rent it again. Only buy it if you know it will pay for itself in a year or so

5) You get extra points if you can sell some other gear to make room for the replacement.

If you're an amateur, you can relax these rules a little … but try not to be the doctor or lawyer with $10,000 of Leica's finest, and no idea how to use it all.

Yes it's fun that we immerse ourselves in the gadget porn that's part of photography. But if we're spending more time thinking about gear than about images, we're getting things backwards. So if you see me heading towards dpreview.com anytime soon, kindly shove a camera in my hand and tell me to get outside and shoot.

Here are a few examples of David's work – check out the slideshow & post your comments below as well: Blogshow

The series of images you will see here are by Roycin D'souza. He is a 20-year old photographer based in Mumbai. While he is also very passionate about photographing musicians in concert (he has photographed over 350 concerts), he started #TAD365 when he felt “the need of shooting more portraits of regular people from a diverse background.”

I've always been jumping around on Twitter and associating this with Twitter made so much more sense since the community gave back to me much more than I could expect.

Since June 2011, he has photographed over 285 people for the project ranging from advertising creatives, to celebrities, writers, teachers, food bloggers and chefs. Roycin quit his day job to travel to five cities in India to photograph these Twitter personalities. He says he spent everything he earned in the last 2 years to make this project a success. He adds, “I'm almost close to a millon hits for the project (on Flickr itself) and I'm travelling to Dubai tomorrow for a month to shoot and meet more people.”

“The project has a very raw element to it. I use a DIY lighting setup and travel all around the city on my Honda Activa (scooter). The people I meet are very different from each other and the shoots are even more impromptu depending on the ideas and the available time.”

Check out Roycin's blog, Facebook page and of course the #TAD365 project as well.

Do you know of other photographers working on personal projects? Feel free and introduce them to Tiffinbox. I would love to hear from them and highlight their work. Thank you!

Heber Vega is an editorial and humanitarian photographer. Originally from Chile, Heber has been based in northern Iraq since 2003. He specializes in documenting the work of humanitarian organizations and also in portraits of people through editorial photography. Heber works primarily as a freelance photographer, working on assignment. He has been commissioned by various organizations, and lately by magazines as well. He is on Twitter and Facebook. You've got to follow him.

Photography is for the soul. It is therapy for the heart.

Zack Arias: Yes, the well known photographer that we hear a lot of these days. I respect him deeply and consider him an online mentor to many of us. I appreciate his generosity, sharing his insights of this industry, and building a community. He once said: “Those of us who make a living with a camera aren't curing cancer”. Actually he’s said that many times… and I totally understand what he means. Sometimes we take everything in this field far too seriously.

Without taking his words too far out of context, I want to propose the idea that photography can heal our own souls and the hearts of others. Photography can help us rise up out of whatever circumstances we find ourselves.

I love photography; I always have. But I’m from Chile, and the Chile of my childhood was a third world country. I never had the necessary resources to own a camera. My best option was to borrow any that I found. Once I became an adult, I totally forgot about those childhood dreams of becoming a photographer. I moved to northern Iraq (Kurdistan) nearly 9 years ago, and began to live and experience life as a humanitarian (NGO) worker.

Kurdistan is an autonomous region filled with people who sadly know too well the meaning of words like pain, genocide, persecution, death, gas attacks, etc. These people have been under every imaginable hardship, yet have been able to survive. Resilience is what has formed their character as a nation and today that resilience has allowed them to create a new era filled with peace and hope, where they have become self-sustainable and finally respected as a nation. The experience of learning about the Kurds, just like experiences I had back in South America, introduced me to the stories of people and places worthy of filling hundreds of books. The frustration of coming across so many important but untold stories led me back to photography. It has become my tool for telling stories, for expression, for giving dignity and for giving (if only for a few minutes) freedom to people with chained souls.

Since then I’ve been pursuing this passion. I’ve been able to work for other NGOs and charities in Iraq, as well as my home country of Chile. Today I’m specializing in portraiture as a way to understand and reveal more of the souls of my subjects. A year or two ago, I had a dream of using photography for people trapped in difficult situations. Why? Because through the years I’ve witness the power and freedom that a camera can give, in the right hands.

This dream led to the creation of The ONE-SHOT Project. I regularly see the healing that can happen. I want to share some of those untold stories and give you the chance to experiment yourself, and perhaps to help empower someone else with the liberating
experience of owning a camera. The names below have been changed, but the stories are very real.

Felipe: I met him through the internet; he was desperately looking to own his first camera. I helped him, gave him some advice, but then I asked the important question “Why? Why a camera?”

His answer hit me. He said, “I’m a cop and I deal with a lot sh** every single day. I’ve been severely depressed for 2 years, and I need to focus on something else. I need to breathe; I need to find myself and spend some time alone.”

Within a few weeks, Felipe got his first camera and is doing much better. He’s taking weekends off and spending them making landscape images…

Muhammed: He is one of the children we have worked with through the ONE-SHOT Project. He’s an orphan and dealing with a lot of pain from his past. Muhammed took part in a photography workshop with us for a couple months, and during the closing ceremony he approached me to speak in private. “Am I good enough? Am I good at all? Did I do a good job? Am I good enough?” He was so insistent that I had a hard time answering back. Why? Because I knew he’d been labeled as a “problem” many times in his life. He struggled at school and was probably a difficult child to deal with. But you know what? Over the months of the workshop, he was one of the most talented students….

A camera, an opportunity to explore and express his curiosity, plus the therapy that comes with caring was all he needed to do well. That day I told him honestly “You are brilliant! You’re one of my best students. You did an incredible job!” Those words are still resonating with him today, in part because he’s so rarely heard those words.

Rasheed: He was a problematic child, more than anyone in his class. I thought it was going to be difficult to keep him in the class; he didn’t pay attention, he was constantly moving, and sometimes was aggressive with the other kids. After a few classes with a camera in his hands, he found focus. He was all about photography: creative like no one else, finding new angles and perspective that only an artist could see. A camera and the experience of making images has made him into a new child. He went from being the most problematic student to the one that arrived 30 minutes before each class, organizing the space so that everything would work well…

Ana: She’s a beautiful person, but after knowing her for a while you can tell that she’s been dealing with a lot of baggage from the past. Behind her warm, candid smile and all the friendship she’s able to share with whoever may happen to need company, she hides pain and problems with self-esteem. Photography for her has been huge. She now advocates for other people with the same problems, especially women. She’s been using her camera to empower people, and today she’s able to share her story knowing that it may help others as well. Step-by-step she is learning how valuable she is for the rest of us….

Myself: For years I wasn’t able to speak in public or a class. I was frightened about what other people would think of me. I was afraid to try new things; afraid they would become the next new failure in my life. I had very poor self-esteem and was incapable of believing that difficult things could be made possible. I was deathly afraid of meeting new people, engaging in conversation. In some ways this is still me, but more and more it describes the stage in life before using a camera broke down those walls.

We are all dealing with a lot stuff. That “stuff” is reflected in our daily lives, in our businesses and in our relationships with the rest of this world.

My call today is to grant you permission to allow your camera to lead you into new situations, and to push out the boundaries of your own life; to allow yourself to experiment with life in a new way. I know that cameras don’t talk, but our souls do. Take a moment (an hour, a day, a week), GO ALONE with your camera, and let it go free. Unleash the talent in your heart. Go somewhere else, maybe the other side of the world as in my case, and allow that camera to discover your surroundings. Allow that camera to discover your true self. Don’t let fear drive you. This is time to connect with ourselves, and to live in the moment with a new pair of eyes.

Travel, seek, analyze, observe, connect, admire the world around you. If you step out so far that fear fills you again, HIDE! But hide behind a viewfinder, until you gather the courage to try it all again. Keep your eyes there, gazing through a lens… and breathe. Breathe deeply.

Ask questions, ignite your curiosity, be gentle and keep doing this, day after day. Don’t worry about all the technical details; learn how to take one photo at a time. Then add something. Ask the next question of your subject; challenge yourself with a new technique or experience. Before you know it you will be immersed in this new world of frozen moments, a world of beautiful details, a world with a window to the souls of those you meet. Photography is a license to get rid of fear. Photography cures, not cancer, but our souls.

Be the next story on the list. Be who you really are!

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I am kicking myself. Hard.

Why? Well, I went on a social media spree and posted about a webinar series I am co-hosting with Angela Pointon, called Swift Kick: Four Things Every Photographer Should Know About Business. Those who follow me on my Twitter and Facebook saw the posts and signed up quickly.

But I didn't really get you guys involved until … now. I am so sorry!

Well, the good news is, there is still time to register for the webinar series that will expose you to the marketing fundamentals most photographers miss.

I am sure you are curious what the webinar series is going to address and how it will help you. Let me tell you a story and I promise to keep it short.

After graduating from journalism school, with a strong emphasis in photography, I thought I was ready to take on the world and offer my photography services to anyone who asked me to photograph them or their event. Sad truth was unless I opened my mouth and told people that I was a photojournalist, no one really knew what I did for a living.

That's the case even today, except I am much better at marketing myself.

As I have already mentioned I have a fairly strong presence on both Twitter and Facebook (and I am exploring Google+). But that's really only online. What about off-line marketing, otherwise known as good ole' networking? I recently signed up to become a member of a local BNI chapter. I expect to renew my local chamber of commerce membership. I am joining other groups where members refer clients back and forth.

All that's great, but even those forays require some structure.

Angela Pointon, with whom I am co-hosting these webinars suggests that we begin by acknowledging our gut instinct. If a certain connection feels right to you, go for it. You really need to listen to what she has to say about this (and this first webinar is free).

The next webinar, with Tamara Lackey as our guest, will delve into the topic of “Discipline.” Without discipline, I am finding rather quickly, one's focus can get distracted. (on October 3, 2012, 8.30 pm to 9.30 pm … that's TODAY folks!)

Rosh Sillars, based in Detroit, Michigan, comes on board to talk about “Branding” (which hopefully we all know means how our business is perceived or thought-about rather than the existence of a logo. (on October 17, 2012, 8.30 pm to 9.30 pm EST)

Lastly, Skip Cohen, a marketing maven in the photography industry joins us to talk about having the “Right Tools,” to market our business. (on November 7, 2012, 8.30 pm to 9.30 pm EST)

Details about each of these sessions can be found here. If you are getting your business off the ground or you have been at it for a few years and want to know more, register for ALL FOUR sessions for just $25 now.

As an added incentive, ProDPI, Fundy Software, Song Freedom, Photocrati, ThinkTank Bags and Sticky Albums have all come on board as sponsors and have some exciting prizes that they are giving away.

ProDPI is giving away a 20″x30″ canvas per webinar.

Fundy Software is giving away Action Hub (a $79 value) to those who enter their email address into a special form which also enters you to win the Total Studio Pack (valued at $499).

Song Freedom is giving away one license for a song on their site, per webinar.

Photocrati is giving away one WordPress theme per webinar.

ThinkTank Bags is giving away one SlingShot 20 bag per webinar.

Sticky Albums has a special code to receive $30 off of their annual plan.

When you register for all the remaining webinars, you'll receive all the recordings PLUS you have at least three chances to win one of the prizes mentioned above.

So, what are you waiting for? Register now.

This guest post is by Josh Solar, a wedding and family photographer based in Kansas City, Missouri. In addition to running their own business, he and his wife, Jenny, help other photographers run their businesses. Read also about their Happy Family Movement. For even more positive energy follow Josh on Twitter. Good vibes all around!

Workshops, conferences, trade shows … being a photographer, you've got many options when it comes to choosing where you go to learn and grow. It's all a bit overwhelming when you think about it.

The thing I've learned about these events in the photography industry is to trust your gut. If you feel a pull towards one over another, trust it. That's how I found myself at a Life as An Artform workshop with Jesh De Rox three and a half years ago, and that's how I ended up at the Beloved Collective Festival two weeks ago in Palm Springs. My life has been forever changed.

I was treated to 3 days of fun in the hot California sun. I heard Jonas Peterson share his story…that you should be the best possible you, you can be. Kristen Kalp made us laugh, made marketing fun, and we collectively jumped in the pool with our clothes on. Bob Goff was there smiling and sharing some of the wonderful stories that have shaped his life (Speaking of Bob, if you haven't read his book, Love Does, you should). Jeff Goelitz from Heart Math helped shed some light on how our hearts are connected in more ways than we can possibly imagine (mind-blowing). Marianne Taylor, Jeremy Bircher, Nicole Polk, Liz Arcus, Amy Seeley, Brooke Snow, and James Moes all gave inspiring, deeply personal talks with a similar overarching theme as the other … be yourself. Follow your heart. Trust your gut. Love life.

And, the fun didn't stop at the speakers. The reason I will attend every single Beloved Festival is for the conversations that happen throughout the day and well into the night. All the wonderfully kind souls in attendance, willing to open their hearts, searching for meaning and purpose in our lives. The why's behind the way we live. For the community built on connection and honesty and delivering THAT to our clients. I will attend for the sunrise concerts, the evening concerts (both planned and unplanned). It's just a great time to kick back, relax, be yourself and celebrate our precious life together!

I was asked to share a few images from Palm Springs, but I didn't actually take any. So, enjoy a few images from my most recent Beloved session. Her name is Teresa. She's had some major changes thrown her way by life, and we spent a few hours belly-laughing, telling stories and celebrating that we get to be alive.

Beloved has forever changed my life. I hope it gets to you as well. The next one is planned for October 21-23, 2013 in Los Angeles.

Will you be there to learn, get inspired and celebrate life with us?